Sarah Browning

My DC Longing

                         It’s like Sodom and Gomorrah in Washington. You wouldn’t believe the filth.
                                           - Overheard in a Philly café

             A city that makes my bones ache with longing—
             peaked Victorian rowhouses of many colors,
             poets on the stoops, calling their harsh beauty
             to one another, GoGo pounding the car windows,
             jazz bops along Florida Avenue, NW.
             My people, my beautiful people.
             Same old bullshit, promises my friend Chris after
             I whisper my longing into his enormous embrace.
            He wants me to release my DC nostalgia, though
            it’s a long while before he releases me and laughs.
            The city now is like that hug: memory and promise
            of bullshit, cranes that decorate the skyline with
            destruction, neighbors whose lifelong light is
            blocked by the new heights that greed builds.
            It’s not just me—Carmen’s moved away and Niki
            too and Melissa long ago, Celeste, Abdul, Damon
            all decamped for Baltimore’s more affordable abodes.
            Meantime, DC apartments boast marble countertops
            and $3,000 rents. When Face hit me up for twenty bucks,
            clean for the moment and after chanting his life
            from the café stage, Kyle called it a Gentrification Tax
            and I was happy to pay. I will always be happy I paid.